Looks like 2.5-ich HDDs have reached another milestone: 500GB model appeared in this form-factor. Let’s find out what Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 is capable of compared with three 320GB HDDs with 5400RPM spindle rotation speed.

We installed the generic OS drivers for the drives and formatted them in FAT32 and NTFS as one partition with the default cluster size. For some tests 32GB partitions were created on the drives and formatted in FAT32 and NTFS with the default cluster size, too. The drives were connected to a Promise SATA300 TX4302 controller installed into a PCI-X slot and switched from the quiet mode (with Advanced Acoustic Management enabled) into the ordinary operating mode where necessary.